US Bombs Out of Germany

October 20, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

US Plowshares Activist Who Climbed Nuclear Weapons Bunkers Tried in Germany for Actions Against ‘Shared’ US H-Bombs

Nukewatch Quarterly Fall 2021

On September 29, 2021, Susan Crane, a Plowshares activist and member of the Catholic Worker community in Redwood City, California, went on trial in District Court in Cochem, Germany, charged with trespass and damage to the fence for go-in actions at the Büchel air base on July 15 and August 6, 2018. Crane’s trial was only the second time that a US resident has been brought to court, even though over two dozen US citizens joined nonviolent “go-in” actions during annual protests in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021. (Dennis DuVall formerly of Arizona was tried and convicted in 2019 but is now a German resident.)

Bench trials and appeals hearings are crowding the court calendar in the ongoing campaign of civil resistance against the 20 US nuclear weapons, known as B61 gravity bombs, stationed at base.

In her defense, Crane intended to present oral testimony and written documents, including a declaration by international law expert Anabel Dwyer of Michigan, and a written appeal to the base’s military personnel that was carried by the group on July 15, when 18 people gained entry to the base in broad daylight on a Sunday morning. In prepared testimony provided to Nukewatch, Crane intended to argue that “sharing” of the US thermonuclear B61 gravity bombs with Germany violates the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), among other international laws. We go to press before the trial, but judges in all similar cases in the “Büchel is Everywhere” campaign have ignored appeals to “crime prevention” defenses under international law and found the protesters guilty.

Nukewatch staffer John LaForge was convicted on the same two charges May 31, 2021, in the Cochem District court, and is now scheduled for a December 9 appeal hearing in the city of Koblenz, an appeal that Crane hopes to join as a co-defendant.

In the coming months, more than a dozen nuclear resisters from Germany, The Netherlands and the United States face trials in Cochem or appeal hearings in Koblenz, many on charges stemming from the 18-person July 2018 “go-in.” In one case, Margriet Bos of the Amsterdam Catholic Worker, who was convicted of trespass and property damage for joining the big go-in, has been informed that the fine imposed by the Cochem District Court has been transferred to the Dutch judiciary which will try and collect the $1,289 fine.

August 2, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Nukewatch Staffer, Convicted of Trespass & Property Damage in Germany, will Appeal

Nukewatch Quarterly Summer 2021

Nukewatch co-director John LaForge was convicted of trespassing and damage to property May 31 in Cochem, Germany. The charges stemmed from two 2018 nuclear weapons protest actions directed against the US nuclear bombs deployed at the Büchel Air Force Base in the southwest state of Rhineland-Pfalz. The trial was only the second for a US citizen in a 25-year-long campaign against “nuclear sharing” between the United States and Germany at Büchel. Over 90 similar trials have resulted from recent protests at the base, but only residents of Germany or The Netherlands have been prosecuted.

Dennis DuVall, formerly of Prescott, Arizona became the first US citizen convicted of the same charges in May 2020, although the long-time member of Veterans for Peace now lives in Germany.

LaForge, 65, was given a penalty of 600 euros ($727) or 50 days of either community service or jail. The bench trial conducted by Cochem District Court Judge Alexander Fleckenstein took place in LaForge’s absence. LaForge will appeal the conviction.

Susan Crane and John LaForge walked out of Büchel Air Force Base in Germany Aug. 6, 2018 after occupying the top of one of its bunkers reportedly holding US nuclear weapons.

In the protest on July 15, 2018, LaForge and 17 others entered the base through five openings cut in the base’s chain link perimeter fence in broad daylight on a Sunday morning. In a subsequent action August 6, the anniversary of the US atomic bombing of Hiroshima, LaForge and Susan Crane of the Redwood City, California Catholic Worker also entered the base unhindered, in daytime, and even climbed to the top of one of the bunkers reportedly holding some of the 20 US hydrogen bombs on base. Charges were not brought against Crane.

About his May 31st guilty verdict LaForge said, “The court refused to consider federal and international laws that forbid preparations for mass destruction. It is grimly ironic that my defense relies on the Nuremberg Charter and Principles which were created in Germany by the WW II allies, with US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson as chief prosecutor leading the charge. Nuremberg law declares that planning and preparing indiscriminate attacks is criminal before the fact. Our actions were taken to prevent the illegal preparations for massacres using US nuclear weapons that take place at the base.”

In the May 31 trial, Attorney Busl read John’s written testimony and introduced several supporting documents including formal declarations by international law expert Anabel Dwyer of Ann Arbor, Michigan, and by retired German judges Bernd Hahnfeld and Ulf Panzer. Judge Fleckenstein said international law was irrelevant to the charges and was better suited for consideration by higher courts.

After similar convictions in the campaign against the “sharing” of US nuclear weapons in Germany, gravity bombs known as B61s, appeals to higher courts have not been successful. Germany’s highest judicial body, the Constitutional Court has ruled that addressing the question of whether deployment is lawful “is not in the public interest.”

In view of the court system’s refusal to consider international treaty law as a defense to the protest charges, several resisters intend to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. The ECHR can hear cases of unfair trials under certain circumstances, and the resisters argue that refusing to consider their international law defense constitutes trial court unfairness or judicial bias.

Nukewatch, and the German group Nonviolent Action Abolish Nuclear Weapons (GAAA) coordinated three delegations of US peace activists — in 2017, 2018, and 2019 — to the annual peace encampments near the Büchel Air Base. The delegations participated in vigils, blockades, and “go-in” actions together with resisters from Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, France, and the UK.

Scores of similar actions have taken place at the base over the last 25 years, and over 90 court trials in Cochem have resulted from the long-running campaign which demands: 1) removal of the US H-bombs, 2) cancellation of their replacement with the new bomb, and 3) German ratification of the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

January 20, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Treaty Banning the Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction Enters Into Force

By John LaForge

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) takes effect Friday, January 22, 2021.

After decades of campaigns of every kind to “ban the bomb”, to prevent the nuclear arms race, and later to freeze the arms race, and, the nuclear weapons prohibition outlaws not just their development, testing and possession, but forbids any threatened use — commonly known as “nuclear deterrence.” Like with other multi-generational struggles against slavery, torture, the death penalty, child labor, TPNW campaigners justly call it “the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.”

The new international law — which for the first time in weapons treaty law requires reparations and compensation to victims of H-bomb testing and production — is similar to earlier global prohibitions such as the Geneva Protocol (outlawing gas warfare), the Hague Conventions (forbidding poisoned weapons), the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Ban the Convention on Cluster Munitions and the anti-personnel Mine Ban.

The difference here is that the world community has finally added to the list of despicable, loathsome, appalling and shunned weapons of war those devices whose effects contain and exceed beyond comprehension the accumulated evil of the all the rest—nuclear and thermonuclear weapons.

Nuclear weapons have been earnestly condemned for 75 years by legal scholars, religious leaders, peace groups, military commanders, prime ministers, presidents and corporate CEOs. They’ve been called “the ultimate evil” by the International Court of Justice in 1996 and any use of them was declared by the UN General Assembly as early as 1961 “a crime against [hu]mankind and civilization.” The TPNW’s language makes clear why: “Cognizant that the catastrophic consequences of nuclear weapons cannot be adequately addressed, transcend national borders, pose grave implications for human survival, the environment, socioeconomic development, the global economy, food security and the health of current and future generations, and have a disproportionate impact on women and girls, including as a result of ionizing radiation…”

Yet nuclear-armed countries all hold that their plans and threats to commit atomic violence are legal. For example, the US Navy Field Manual says, “There is at present no rule of international law expressly prohibiting States from the use of nuclear weapons in warfare. In the absence of express prohibition, the use of such weapons … is permitted.”

No more. The TPNW rebukes and nullifies this artful dodge, which is partly why its establishment is a monumental accomplishment. Forbidding nuclear weapons by name is also a triumph of harrowing urgency, considering the number of doddering heads of state with access to nuclear launch codes and especially in view of the atomic scientists’ “Doomsday Clock” being set at 100 seconds to midnight.

Countries with nuclear arsenals rejected the UN negotiations in 2017 that produced the TPNW, and they dismiss its obligations because the law applies only to states that ratify it. The duplicity of the nuclear-armed governments was displayed by then US UN Ambassador Nicki Haley who led 35 countries in a boycott of the talks. Haley said the treaty would end up disarming the nations “trying to keep peace and safety”. At the time, the United States was militarily occupying and/or at war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Niger. Haley’s speech must have reminded the more than two-thirds of the UN Ambassadors that “hypocrisy is the respect that vice pays to virtue.”

The power of the new Treaty is worth celebrating for now, but then it must be employed by us all to end the public’s ignorance, denial, forgetfulness, and habituation regarding plans for nuclear war, and to bring the nuclear weapons states into compliance. ###

— John LaForge is a Co-director of Nukewatch, and with Kelly Lundeen co-edits its newsletter, Nukewatch Quarterly.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/01/20/treaty-banning-the-ultimate-weapon-of-mass-destruction-enters-into-force/

http://www.peacevoice.info/2021/01/19/treaty-banning-the-ultimate-weapon-of-mass-destruction-enters-into-force/

January 15, 2021 by Nukewatch Leave a Comment

Treaty Seeks End to Nuclear Madness

The US delegation standing just outside the Büchel Air Base, and in front of inflatable mock B61 nuclear bombs, included from left, Brian Terrell, Andrew Lanier, Susan Crane, Cee’Cee’ Anderson, Ralph Hutchison, Richard Bishop, Cindy Collins, Kevin Collins, and John LaForge. Not pictured, Fred Galluccio and Dennis DuVall.

By Ralph Hutchison, John LaForge, 15 Jan. 2021

On January 22, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will enter into force. The treaty bans the development, production, possession, deployment, testing, use and just about anything else you can imagine related to nuclear weapons.

Fifty years later, nine nuclear-armed militaries possess more than 13,000 nuclear weapons, arsenals that mock their claimed commitment to disarm “at an early date.”

Approved at the United Nations by 122 countries in 2017, and subsequently signed by 86 and ratified by 51 nations, the nuclear weapons ban will join the venerated status of international prohibitions already established against lesser weapons of mass destruction. These earlier agreements include the Geneva Gas Protocol, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Ottawa Treaty or Mine Ban Convention and the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is no magic wand. Nine nuclear-armed states claim that the treaty doesn’t apply to them, and it’s true that only governments that are “states parties” to the treaty are subject to its prohibitions and obligations. However, the treaty can be a kind of a lever and a beacon for achieving the elimination of nuclear weapons, a goal every government on earth claims to desire.

“the nuclear weapons ban will join the venerated status of international prohibitions already established against lesser weapons of mass destruction”

Decades of refusal to conclude “good faith” negotiations for nuclear disarmament “at an early date,” which the United States and four other nuclear nations agreed to in the 1970 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, have left the rest of the world fed up. Fifty years later, nine nuclear-armed militaries possess more than 13,000 nuclear weapons, arsenals that mock their claimed commitment to disarm “at an early date.”

As with bans on other weapons of mass destruction, scofflaw states that continue to produce and use nuclear weapons will increasingly be condemned and shunned as outliers and rogue actors. And nuclear-armed states have already been stung by the treaty’s imminent entry into force. Last October, the Trump White House urged those governments that had ratified the treaty to withdraw their ratifications. Happily, none did.

For more than a decade, public support for the elimination of nuclear weapons remains consistently strong. Current polls — Belgium, 64%; Germany, 68%; Italy, 70%; Netherlands, 62% — show strong majorities in countries that now host U.S. nuclear weapons in Europe. The treaty heralds a new global, civil, diplomatic and economic environment in which nuclear weapons are banned. In Belgium, one of five NATO countries that currently station U.S. nuclear weapons inside their territories, the parliament in January 2020 nearly expelled the U.S. weapons in a close vote. When the first NATO country still hosting the U.S. nuclear bombs demands their removal, others are expected to follow suit.

Elsewhere, financial divestment campaigns in Europe are succeeding, pressing hundreds of institutions to get out of the business of genocidal atomic violence. The Dutch pension fund APB, the fifth largest of its kind in the world, has announced it will exclude companies involved in production of nuclear weapons. It joins more than seventy other European banks, pension funds, and insurance companies that have already adopted divestment policies.

January 22 marks the culmination of the effort led by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, civil society, and non-nuclear-armed states to create the treaty. It is also the beginning of a new movement that will, in the end, see the elimination of the existential nuclear threat.

Given the need to stop the Biden administration from continuing the $2 trillion commitment to “modernize” U.S. nuclear weapons, build new bomb plants, and invest in new nuclear weapons, the treaty and its message could not be timelier or more compelling.

As supporters the world over have noted, this treaty is the beginning of the end of nuclear weapons.

Ralph Hutchison is coordinator for the Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.

John LaForge.JPG John LaForge is a co-director of Nukewatch in Wisconsin.

This column was produced for the Progressive Media Project, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.

Treaty Banning the Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction Enters Into Force

Treaty Seeks End to Nuclear Madness

“the nuclear weapons ban will join the venerated status of international prohibitions already established against lesser weapons of mass destruction”

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“the nuclear weapons ban will join the venerated status of international prohibitions already established against lesser weapons of mass destruction”

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